The well of lost plots by Jasper Fforde

still confused. “What happened to him? Why isn’t he with me now?”
    “He was eradicated,” replied Gran in a low voice, “by Lavoisier — and Goliath.”
    “I remember,” I answered, the darkness in my mind made light as a curtain seemed to draw back and everything that had happened flooded in. “Jack Schitt. Goliath. They eradicated Landen to blackmail me. But I failed. I didn’t get him back — and that’s why I’m here.” I stopped. “But, but, how could I possibly forget him? I was only thinking about him yesterday! What’s happening to me?”
    “It’s Aornis, my dear,” explained Gran, “she is a mnemonomorph. A memory-changer. Remember the trouble you had with her back home?”
    I did, now she mentioned it. Gran’s prompting broke the delicate veil of forgetfulness that cloaked Aornis’s presence in my mind — and everything about Hades’s little sister returned to me as though no longer hidden from my conscious memory. Aornis, who had sworn revenge for her brother’s death at my hands; Aornis, who could manipulate memories as she chose; Aornis, who had nearly brought about a gooey Dream Topping global Armageddon. But Aornis wasn’t from here. She lived in —
    “— the
real
world,” I murmured out loud. “How can she be here, inside fiction? In
Caversham Heights
of all places?”
    “She isn’t,” replied Gran. “Aornis is only in your mind. It isn’t all of her, either — simply a mindworm — a sort of mental virus. She is resourceful, adaptable and spiteful; I know of no one else who can have an independent life within someone else’s memory.”
    “So how do I get rid of her?”
    “I have some experience of mnemonomorphs from my youth, but some things you have to defeat on your own. Stay on your toes and we will speak often and at length.”
    “Then this isn’t over yet?”
    “No,” replied Gran sadly, shaking her head. “I wish it were. Be prepared for a shock, young Thursday — tell me Landen’s name in full.”
    “Don’t be ridiculous!” I scoffed. “It’s Landen Parke—”
    I stopped as a cold fear welled up inside my chest. Surely I could remember my own husband’s name? But try as I might, I could not. I looked at Gran.
    “Yes, I do know,” she replied, “but I’m not going to tell you. When you remember, you will know you have won.”
     

5.
The Well of Lost Plots
     
Footnoterphone: Although the idea of using footnotes as a communication medium was suggested by Dr. Faustus as far back as 1622, it wasn’t until 1856 that the first practical footnoterphone was demonstrated. By 1895 an experimental version was built into
Hard Times
, and within the next three years most of Dickens was connected. The system was expanded rapidly, culminating in the first transgenre trunk line, opened with much fanfare in 1915 between Human Drama and Crime. The network has been expanded and improved ever since, but just recently the advent of mass junkfootnoterphones and the deregulation of news and entertainment channels has almost clogged the system. A mobilefootnoterphone network was introduced in 1985.
    CAT FORMERLY KNOWN AS CHESHIRE,
Guide to the Great Library
     
     
    GRAN HAD GOT up early to make my breakfast and I found her asleep in the armchair with the kettle almost molten on the stove and Pickwick firmly ensnared in Gran’s knitting. I made some coffee and cooked myself breakfast despite feeling nauseated. ibb and obb wandered in a little later and told me they had “slept like dead people” and were so hungry they could “eat a horse between two mattresses.” They were just tucking into my breakfast when there was a rap at the door. It was Akrid Snell, one-half of the Perkins & Snell series of detective fiction. He was about forty, dressed in a sharp fawn suit with a matching fedora, and wore a luxuriant red mustache. He was one of Jurisfiction’s lawyers and had been appointed to represent me; I was still facing a charge of Fiction Infraction after I